If you’ve realised your marketing efforts aren’t quite getting the results you had hoped for, you’re not alone. Many small businesses are still investing in outdated marketing strategies that are expensive, and don’t always result in a positive ROI. The solution? You need to be focusing on inbound marketing. These inbound marketing strategies will help you grow your business in the right way, whilst being cost effective, and providing you with a return on investment for years to come. Sound good?
Let’s dive in.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Have you been wrestling with understanding marketing and deciding on a course of action?
The dilemma is finding a marketing solution that will attract customers whilst staying within your marketing budget, and doesn’t waste time or resources. As humans do occasionally need to eat and sleep, time should always be taken into consideration as an investment. In this article we are going to discuss how you can promote your business effectively, on a long-term basis.
Have you heard of outbound marketing? We will discuss outbound marketing later in this article, but for now, think of outbound marketing as a push. When using outbound marketing strategies, a company is pushing their product or service into a buyer’s face.
Well, inbound marketing is the opposite.
In utilizing inbound methods, think of pulling on this same buyer’s arm. Inbound marketing gently, or not so gently – it’s up to you, tugs on a client’s attention. It attracts them to your product or service.
Imagine driving down main street with your windows open to enjoy the breeze. As you approach the traffic lights, you spy a person dressed up as a large pizza mascot in the hot sun on the street corner. Not only does the large dancing pizza demand attention, this mascot is also waving a loud, colorful sign. “Oh no,” you think with a sinking feeling, assuming this pushy pizza might try to harass you as your car comes to a stop. Sure enough, as your car coasts to a stop at the red light right next to the mascot’s corner, the pizza-costumed fellow runs over and shoves the sign right next to your driver’s side window. The pizza loudly demands your attention. As you politely wait to drive away, the mascot becomes more insistent and even bangs the sign at your windshield so you cannot help but look at it.
This is an example of outbound marketing.
Sure, that may be an extreme metaphor, but don’t tell me you haven’t encountered a gigantic pop-up browser window on a website that refuses to go away even after you keep closing it? Even worse, the ones with video and audio! Ever forgotten to turn down the volume on your device and suddenly want to jump out of your skin at the sudden audio playing?
Yeah, me too.
So, how did the term ‘inbound marketing’ originate and when did it become a thing?
The book Inbound Marketing was published in 2009 by marketing pioneers Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan, founders of HubSpot, and David Meerman Scott. These authors made the concept of inbound marketing widely available to all. With the ever-changing landscape, the book, rated 4.5 stars on Amazon, has since been updated in 2014 with even more relevant data. The useful primer explains how to transform marketing online, such as how to best convert website visitors to leads, which then leads to nurturing those leads into becoming delighted clients.
The updated version also includes how to create viral campaigns and many case studies of real-life examples. The concept targets the fact that technology has led the public to increase online searching, especially for product reviews. Additionally, over time, consumers have become more selective in their shopping attitudes in that they do not want to be sold to. Having more control and understanding over their buying choices became more important. Building trust, and a relationship is at the core of inbound marketing.
How does something attract by pulling without being up in someone’s face? You use a compelling story that inspires them. Read on to discover why you should go the inbound route, what types of strategies you can choose to use, and how to successfully integrate inbound and outbound techniques.
Why Should You Focus on Inbound Marketing Strategies?
HubSpot coined the term in 2006, and since then, many have followed their four-stage process.
Inbound marketing’s four stages are:
- Attract
- Convert
- Close
- Delight
A business or organization can attract strangers into becoming visitors with captivating subject matter or valuable information. This is best accomplished with excellent search engine optimization (SEO). How might you do this? Try blogging with strategic keywords. A great way to prepare for this is by doing extensive market research, especially on what your competitors use.
Next, you will want to turn your visitor into a lead by capturing their contact details. Popular ways of doing so are by using signup forms or gripping landing pages. Make sure your touch points with your visitors include calls-to-action, such as to join your email list, taking a survey or similar engagement piece, or even to initiate a free discovery or consultation call.
After you do this, close the deal and create a customer. Sweet, right? That email list mentioned above? A person’s email address is valuable! This is a direct way of reaching your prospective customers without having to rely on any other platform, social media or otherwise. Emails can feel personal and charming. Use the opportunity make your product or service shine!
Does Inbound Marketing Work for Any Type of Business?
Is inbound marketing ideal for big businesses?
What about for small businesses and startups?
Is it applicable and valuable for super niche firms?
Yes, yes, and yes!
Applicable to businesses of all sizes and types, inbound marketing is hands down the best way to bring your ideal customer right to your doorstep, practically begging you to take their money.
Here are some things your business can benefit from when you start taking advantage of inbound marketing strategies.
Customer Loyalty
Happy customers are often repeat customers; therefore, they buy future products much quicker. The more loyalty, the more ROI you have. What else? Loyal, repeat customers are an excellent source of word of mouth marketing!
Education
Educate and inform is the name of this game. If the competition hasn’t created a forum yet, be the first to create this online community! This is an excellent advantage of inbound marketing for small businesses or super niche organizations. Educating your ideal buyer sets you up as the expert on this subject matter.
Organic Growth Through Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is the goal, which leads good reviews online, and in turn, more sales. Customers nowadays are happier doing their own research online before making purchases, and they have become more selective in choosing vendors. It absolutely does not matter if purchases are big or small. When these buyers come upon your company in a natural way, they already feel less pressured to take action RIGHT NOW! They will purchase when the time is right. This is a process called organic growth. This approach attracts potential customers toward your business through your content and finding other touch points to engage and connect with them.
Cost Effectiveness
Inbound marketing is far more cost effective than outbound marketing. As mentioned earlier, because blogs and SEO are widely considered to be the leading techniques of inbound marketing, small businesses can use these very cost-effective tools to draw attention on the web and guide prospects towards them. Another important fact to remember is that being first to establish a presence on social media platforms against rivals or competitors will put you in a lead position. Being a presence gives you a stronger pedestal in which to establish expertise and quality content.
Less Competition in Search Terms
This is more applicable for niche and super niche organizations. Because there just isn’t an abundance of competitors in the field, there could be a number of possible keywords to be created. With keywords, marketers usually need to target topics and keywords that they can rank for in order to make good use of resources, i.e. time and SEO efforts. Using these keywords can lead to reasonably quick web traffic and rankings. Once this gets initiated, a company continues to build the solid foundation on these low competition keywords and then begins to branch out into other volume-rich topics.
Time
Having an inbound strategy is like having a marketing team work for you 24/7. Unlike trade shows or cold calls that traditional (AKA outbound), methods use, you do not have to be there in person in order to connect to buyers.
Organic Growth
Inbound strategies help consumers find a business organically. HubSpot’s marketing research shows statistics where viewers who find a company organically online have an approximate 14.6% close rate. In heavy contrast, outbound leads have only a 1.7% close rate. This is a long-term commitment. This commitment must be to continue producing compelling materials while simultaneously interacting with visitors, leads, and customers through the businesses’ varied platforms.
To clarify, this is not a “get rich quick” marketing methodology. Patience is paramount because this is a strategy that builds on top of itself. Content is king! The more content the business puts out, the more the business’s authority is increased. Social media followings will take a while to grow, as well, so it is important to remember this is a long-term solution.
For some firms, there may be a budget to invest in a social media marketer or digital marketing specialist. Having more resources may help to speed up the process.
Inbound marketing works for any industry. In targeting a particular demographic, this marketing mindset already knows who is interested. To keep providing value in good content, any industry, whether ordinary/”boring” or niche, can use inbound marketing strategies. In fact, for the more ordinary industries, consumers may not be aware of your brand, so this would be opportune to use to demonstrate why your organization has the most compelling value, and therefore the most compelling product. Likewise, this also works for super-niche industries because becoming the first to be an established, helpful, informational blog.
25 Inbound Marketing Strategies to Up-Level Your Business
Surveys
Survey, survey, survey. Figure out who your ideal buyer is through a survey. Popular ones are SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, or Google Forms. Keep the survey short and sweet, but be sure to include a version of the question of what their biggest struggle is. Knowing and understanding your buyer’s biggest need(s) is the key to your other steps. The survey can also help to tell you their main interests.
Interviews
Interview the target market by selecting particular individuals through various social media platforms. Another group to look for interviewees is in your current customer list. Interviews can be conducted through phone call or tele-conferencing mediums. Frame it as a consultation call with the benefit to them being able to receive free advice from you. This helps to continue gathering data, albeit more specific data.
Competitor Analysis
Leverage other people’s audiences by looking for forums that already exist where your business may engage in to offer valuable engagement. Once your presence gains momentum, leverage that audience into building your own.
Smart Website Design
Your website design should be attractive and easy to navigate. If the website is not well-designed or functional, this can frustrate users and visitors, causing them to leave and buy elsewhere. A website must delight prospects. With smartphones being a regular tool those in first-world countries use, it is important to have mobile friendly pages, many people run internet searches on their phones so your business’ website must be accessible and will increase customer satisfaction.
Blogging
Blogging adds tremendous value. Do not underestimate blogging and how distinctively quality content can drive traffic. The company that founded the term “inbound marketing” mentions that those who emphasize blogging are 13x likelier to have a positive ROI.
The amount of good content correlates to the more traffic the blog will bring in, so ideally, try to publish new relevant information as frequently as you can. This detailed guide by Neil Patel will help you judge the ideal frequency of new blog posts for your business.
If you haven’t started a blog for your company yet, check out this guide on how to start a blog.
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging creates an increase in traffic and relevance to your offerings. Doing this on other publications or niche websites that are relevant can drive traffic and raise your search rankings, thanks to backlinks. This will also add exposure to another audience, some of whom may not have heard of your organization. Be consistent if going this route as this plays into long-term strategy. Choose publications and blogs that will offer high return.
Infographics
Blogging does not always have to be all words. Visuals are great, especially for those who prefer graphics or those who do not have time to read copious amounts of words in order to digest content. Infographics can help condense insights and wisdom from long-form content for these prospective clients. Be sure to create infographics that offer real value, not simply for the opportunity to go wild on colors and fonts.
Customer Spotlights and Case Studies
Customer spotlights or featuring case studies can be extremely inspirational and lightly prod, albeit persuasively. This is because they are real life examples of what can happen for a prospective client. The visitor reading this will read about a story or customer that bought your product or service (or a similar product or service) and found great benefits from it. Indeed, the reader will wonder if this will also work for them.
PPC Advertising
PPC online ads are a legitimate part of inbound marketing. PPC stands for pay-per-click advertising and are different from paid ads. This method needs a minimum of 30 days to build momentum and see the start of results, experts say. Some experts say 90 days is more reasonable to manage a business’ expectations. Time and efforts is required to constantly keep an eye on your PPC advertising.
SEO
To increase organic traffic, focus on SEO. Think of SEO as the glue that binds all the strategies together. Top ranking will lead to high return on investment by driving traffic and visitors to your brand. How do you do this? Again, content is king!
Learning SEO basics will help you to increase your ranking. If budget is available, consider hiring a digital marketer whose strength is in SEO to join your team. On-page SEO are things on your own website. This means creating valuable content that answers questions and addresses needs. Providing solutions to problems helps your on-page SEO. Use relevant keywords for these searches.
Off-page SEO involves platforms and touchpoints you do not own. The goal here is to have reputable websites link back to your content on your own website. The more off-page SEO, the higher the organic ranks. There are many factors that influence SEO, including website user experience, but finding the best keywords is vital.
Key data points to understand your business’s SEO performance include: page title, target keyword, meta description, page headings used, inbound links, images present, image ALT tags, date late updated, page visits, page entries and exist, page bounce rate, average time on page, and broken links. Even if your business is already working on some SEO, continue to discover ways to maximize its effectiveness.
Social Media
Social media drives traffic and is a channel to find new leads and customers. Active social media users spend up to three hours a day on these platforms. Repurpose content and share on social media pages or discussions to attract new and returning visitors. Share and promote content, as well as products and services.
With an abundance of social media platforms out there, determine which your audience spends most time on. Creating a social media promotion plan should be part of your long-term inbound marketing strategy. Social media increases public awareness of your business.
Community
Community draws a sense of belonging. People want a tribe. An easy way to do this is to create a Facebook group that those who sign up for an email course can opt-in on. You may want to expand it to include prospects, in addition to customers. Simply add a link to it in your welcome emails to new email subscribers! Those who follow brands on social media tend to be more loyal as they feel part of a group of lifelong friends.
Social Proof
Use customer reviews or testimonials on your social media accounts and website as social proof. The majority of people trust reviews by other consumers; therefore, encourage current customers to leave reviews. This can be done by offering a discount in exchange for reviews. Later, the verbiage left by others can be added to your content to add authenticity of your brand.
Partner with Influencers
Influencers are allies, if you reach out to them genuinely. Influencers on social media that are relevant to your target market can assist in promoting your products or content. This is effective due to influencers’ large volume of fan followers. Because influencers have the trust of their followers, those that view the influencers’ promotions are likely to become leads. When choosing influencers, be sure to have researched whether your ideal buyer is part of the same demographic.
Landing Pages
Landing pages are where leads are sent to after clicking on a call-to-action you’ve created. Be sure to focus on how relevant this landing page is to the call-to-action. Next, decide on the goal of this page. It can be to download an ebook or a guide. It might be to sign up for a newsletter. After this, ensure the design of your landing page is engaged and visually attractive. Some marketers use videos, though this is not necessary. Others use images and gripping testimonials. A landing page can be a product page, a form, or a subscription service.
Whitepapers
Some businesses can make use of a whitepaper. A whitepaper is an authoritative, well-researched report that educates the reader on a particular subject. Whitepapers are more formal than a blog post and tend to be much more in-depth with original substance. Whitepapers must also look good, as visual presentation matters. One big advantage whitepapers can have is that you can request contact information in order for prospects to gain access. The readers download the content after providing their email address, which businesses can add to their email list to nurture and engage with.
Ebooks
Be an expert authority on your subject matter by writing an original ebook. Ebooks are an excellent way to further brand development and brand positioning. You can choose to either sell your ebook, or give it away in return for your visitor’s email address in order to develop your email list.
Email Marketing
Email marketing requires a strategy as well. It is the core of inbound strategy because it is a central place to promote new blog articles to subscribers, a place to alert them to a new video or podcast, and just about any new content you’ve created. Develop a workflow that sends targeted content to specific contact lists.
Email Courses
Email courses can be tailored to the needs of your ideal customer. This targeted content can be challenging to create but can be a very effective method of converting leads into customers. Tutorials can be a great way to integrate into email courses. Some marketers do the 5-day approach or 7-day email course offering.
Webinars
Webinars are gaining traction and popping up everywhere. Some viewers dislike reading and much prefer to absorb information by watching. Webinars are also an in-between the informal nature of blog posts and the polished personality of the whitepaper. Webinars are seminars on the internet. Valuable information is delivered in an engaging and affable way. How do people sign up? By offering their email address, of course. This again helps your lead generation.
Podcasts
Podcasting has gained footing on the web as more and more people amass listeners and followers. This format allows you to add personality and voice to a brand, as well as be relatable and connect with your listeners. Some choose to do them intermittently while others produce often, such as weekly.
Video Content
Video content is very effective. People love it on YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram. All three, even! Video content can also be repurposed from webinars or written content. Your content can include product reviews, customer testimonials, product demos, case studies, or vlogs (video blogs). Video content is a great way to educate your audience on the value of your offerings.
Calls to Action
Calls-to-action (CTAs) directs traffic. Businesses who do not have clear calls-to-action have a difficult time converting traffic into leads. What calls-to-action do is to pointedly guide visitors to where you’d like them to go, such as a landing page. You may choose to use a large, bold button that requests an action. However, it must be clear what you are offering first before they hand out their email or contact information.
Remarketing
An effective tactic of inbound marketing is remarketing. This occurs after a lead has expressed interest in your content, products, or offerings. Remarketing is a strategy to keep these visitors drawn in and interested. By using cookies, remarketing follows visitors to other sites, including social media, and reminds them about your product or service. It can show a specific ad to a set of visitors that visited a particular topic or set of pages on your site. It can show ads to those who may have added items to their shopping cart on your site but have not purchased yet.
Up-Level Once Again by Integrating Inbound and Outbound Methods
Why is this important? Knowing both and using both can work to your advantage in digital marketing. This way, you will reach your marketing goals far more quickly. This article has been about inbound marketing. Let’s review what outbound marketing is.
Outbound marketing uses tactics that prioritizes volume in order to make a sale. Outbound strategies tend to be one-way conversations promoting a product or service and focusing on the reasons why someone should purchase it. This is also commonly called “interruption” or “push” marketing.
Examples of outbound marketing include trade shows, seminar series, email blasts, cold calling, telemarketing, television commercials, radio ads, and print advertisements. If you’re thinking that all of this sounds fairly generic and general, you’re absolutely right. That is the precise challenge of outbound marketing. The message must be general enough to show to a broad range of people.
Research has shown that an average individual gets besieged with 2,000 outbound marketing pushes in a single day! How have creative people managed to screen these? Some of us use caller ID and emails are developing intelligent spam filters. Be honest-you love your email spam filters, don’t you?
Now knowing the differences between the two, let’s ask ourselves if it’s really possible to successfully integrate both.
Yes!
Because inbound marketing is compelling due to the targeted message and aligned, quality content, there is a level of satisfaction on the consumer’s end. Inbound strategies lead visitors in and have better sales conversions since the visitors are already interested in your content, your suggested solutions, and your proffered product or service.
What can you do to integrate both into your marketing? Before proceeding to the checklist below, make sure you are prepared with these things:
- Knowing your demographic’s consumer and their interests or needs. Build a picture of a fictional buyer or your ideal buyer in your mind. Are you solving a problem for them by offering a solution?
- Where they are from. This is crucial not only to track your metrics and have a greater understanding of the return on investment (ROI) from your various marketing investments, but also to help you build an understanding of how they discovered your site and what motivation drove them towards you.
Be prepared with this and you will have all that you need to shape relevant content pieces in order to deliver quality to your prospective client base. An example of how to blend two very different marketing strategies:
1. Who is your buyer?
2. Create content for this consumer.
- Blog post
- Interview
- E-book
- Infographic
- Podcast
- Webinar
- Video
3. Upload content to your website. If you do not have a website, create a landing page.
4. Design an ad based on this content’s topic. This ad should fit more than one platform, such as creating it for Facebook and resizing it for Instagram.
5. Create a sponsored story in Facebook Ads Manager.
6. Include this content in your Instagram Story.
7. Launch campaign.
Essentially, what we are doing here is creating very specific, detailed content, which is an inbound move, to advertise and blast these in an outbound method.
Conclusion
You will find fervent fans of each depending on who you talk to. In this day and age, the belief is that most marketers still rely on outbound marketing primarily. Even though this is the case, outbound marketing may be going out of style due to the overly aggressive, pushy nature. A combination of both strategies, executed correctly, can really bring your business to the next level.
Utilizing the best of both worlds can bring a multitude of opportunities for your business. Finding the right blend between both outbound and inbound marketing strategies leads to higher ROI. Inbound marketing on its own is richly attractive. If time and money are constraints, then inbound marketing is the way to go.
About the Author
Multipassionate, Jenn P.T. Lee is on a quest for adventures, breaking out of her comfort zone, and shenanigans that lend to her writing, proofreading, and editing capabilities. Jenn believes in empowering individuals, teams, and businesses to express their best selves and their message with the effectiveness and potency of words. Visit https://medium.com/@jennuinelee to find her writing or connect with her at http://pph.me/jennuinelee.